O! Let me have thee whole! all - all - be mine!
by MrsVonTrapp
Summary: Anne and Gilbert's M-rated wedding night and honeymoon moments from my story 'Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd'. From both Anne and Gilbert's perspective, this is my contribution to that romantic, impassioned time that LMM left as a frustratingly blank canvas, as our two learn about themselves and one another. To contain a three-four chapter arc. And a fair bit of Keats!
1. Chapter 1 Aching

**Author's Note**

_If you have found your way over from my T story, __**Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, **__thank you and I hope this will be worth the trip! If you have just stumbled across this in isolation, welcome, and I trust it will make sense to you – though please note the action is a continuation of Chapter 20 of the above story. _

_I have long wanted to write Anne and Gilbert's wedding night and honeymoon from a canon-compliant perspective. Although I won't be delving into this time quite as thoroughly as others here, this M section will still have a three or four chapter arc and as such, this first chapter beginning might seem a little… tame. Please have faith! I do most definitely have a plan, and it does NOT involve several weeks omitted! _

_After this M section, the action will return to the T section for the last main story chapter (or two!)_

_This chapter is humbly dedicated to my Sullivan series-loving readers, who are sure to easily uncover my various tributes here, particularly the fabulous __**DrinkThemIn. **I __hope you will enjoy the many references I have included during those flashbacks/imaginings, and have as much fun spotting them as I did myself in including them. Long term followers of my stories will know my love for Megan Follows and especially Jonathan Crombie, and the series that led me, time and again, back to LMM, and eventually to fanfic x_

_With love_

_MrsVonTrapp x_

* * *

'_**O! LET ME HAVE THEE WHOLE – ALL, ALL – BE MINE!' **_

* * *

**Chapter One**

_**Aching**_

_Unmasked, and being seen—without a blot! __  
__O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine! _*_  
_

* * *

_**Gilbert**_

* * *

_Gilbert glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful grey eyes_. _He nearly lost an oar in his surprise and confusion, turning to the little half-drowned figure incredulously. _**

"_Anne Shirley! How on earth did you get there?" he exclaimed. _

_Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. It was the first time he had ever properly touched Anne Shirley, her girlish red braid enclosed in his long schoolboy fingers notwithstanding. He wondered if her immediate, unconscious shiver was a response to her circumstances or to him – for surely he was not the only one to feel that electrical current run through him at the soft, soaked, pale skin in his warm grasp. There was evidently no help for it; Anne, clinging to his hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and trying her best to be furious, in the stern, with her slender arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. _

"_What has happened, Anne?" he asked, taking up his oars with care, flexing his muscles for good measure even as he concentrated on their watery passage and her extraordinary tale. _

"_We were playing Elaine," explained Anne frigidly, without even looking at her rescuer, "and I had to_ _drift down to Camelot in the barge—I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help." She paused, taking a taut little breath. "Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?" _

_Gilbert felt the smirk on his face at this Shirley-strength escapade; surely she out of all the girls he had ever known was the only one capable of this kind of calamity._

"_Elaine of Asotlat?" he questioned. "Tennyson?" _

"_You probably don't know it," she sniffed, hugging her dripping shawl more tightly to her in her affront._

"_Of course I do," he answered mildly, marvelling that here, now, in this unlikely situation, he was engaging in his first proper conversation with her. Even if it was, in true idiosyncratic fashion, over poetry. He knew enough of Tennyson to get by, though he rather preferred Keats. "Elaine. And Lancelot," he emphasised, finally allowing his grin. "I rather fancy _that_ mantle."_

"_Of Sir Lancelot?" her greening eyes rolled extravagantly in her derision. _

"_Naturally. Because he was a knight at arms, full of heroic deeds. And, the fact is, I rescued you."_

"_Help was on the way," she countered, "and I was calming waiting for it."_

_He bit down on another grin, allowing her this concession, knowing how her pride was bruised and her self possession battered. Though he could barely contain his own disparate feelings of excitement, wonder, surprise, confusion and evidently attraction, like a kite suddenly launched on the breeze, its long tail unfurling, or a coiled spring in a children's toy that had been released unsuspectingly. Anne Shirley sat there, in all her bedraggled glory, and all he saw was the bright sunlight outlining her lithe form; the gentle swell of her budding breasts; her titian hair darkened and dripping enticingly down her dress; her swan-neck and her stubborn pointed chin; and those wide haunting eyes and those shell-pink lips in their tight line of displeasure, which surely had to soften under the persuasive power of his own…_

_Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing, mind in a whirl and feelings frayed. He had just imagined himself kissing Anne Shirley, the girl who had trampled upon his ego, ignored his myriad apologies, and thwarted every overture of friendship… imagined kissing her and pressing her into him, feeling her melt into him, and uttering the endearments he had longed to have her offer him…_

_Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly onto shore, and he was snapped back to reality._

"_I'm very much obliged to you," she said haughtily as she turned away, dismissing him as she might any humble serf beneath her notice. But Gilbert had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her arm, in an act that already loudly echoed his desperation. _

"_Anne," he said hurriedly, "look here. Can't we be good friends? This childishness has gone on long enough, don't you think? I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. You've no idea _how _sorry. I didn't mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it's so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now—honest I do. Let's be friends." _

_Her hair indeed was the stuff of dreams to him – the tendrils he twirled around his fingers or passed his hands through in those unconscious hours when in sleep his dreaming desires overtook his daytime determination. She couldn't know how he had tortured himself over that youthful misstep, berating himself anew with every scathing glance she had given him in school, and at every important juncture and in every academic challenge his regret was heavy to not be able to share in it with her; she alone who equalled his drive and ambition, with her own unapologetic curiosity and fierce competitiveness and fearsome intelligence. How the one who might have been his comrade had instead become his adversary._

_His contrite tone now would have done much to win any damsel, and his imploring look, half-shy, half-eager, seemed to encourage Anne to pause, to hesitate, to waver in her old, tired – and in all honesty, downright petulant – resolution. Gilbert saw her grey eyes widen, searching his face, before something – a thought, a memory – seemed to cross her consciousness, and the shutters came down, as tightly as they ever had, and he knew all was lost._

"_No," she said coldly, "I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe; and I don't want to be!" _

_The ice entered his heart at her stony look and her callous, uncharitable response, yet his reaction was all heat and hot headedness, his hurt blistering at this final, unmistakable rejection, worse than all the others. For he had sensed her almost-capitulation, and was so frustrated that her denial of his friendship would come at her own expense as well as his and yet she did it anyway._

"_All right!" he sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his cheeks. "I'll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don't care either!" _

_He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, not even deigning to glance back, blinking at his ridiculous tears and cursing her and himself to the heavens. He was done with her. Done! He didn't need her, and he would learn not to want her. He would learn … he _must.

_That night, alone in his boyhood bed, he willed himself to not dream of her, and was dismayed in the morning to find he had ignored his own edict completely. _

* * *

"_Yes," _Gilbert determined with a dawning smile of wonder, pressing her close to him, _all _of her close to him, for the very first time. "This is most definitely real."

He pressed Anne to him to the point where he couldn't distinguish where he ended and she began; but then, she had always been his genesis; the point where everything started and stopped for him. If only that angry, agonised young man, aching for her in ways he was only beginning to understand, could have known the end result of all those years of waiting and wanting… but would he, then, have striven for her so long and so faithfully?

Impossible questions, now, and his mind could not carry all of them; not when there was so much to feel and to explore and to process; overwhelmingly now he was wholly engaged in the sensation of her small, pointed, perfect breasts nestled against his chest through her chemise and his shirt; her tiny waist made tinier still with his arms around her; of the silken solace of her skin as he slid his hands up and down her bare arms, making her shiver and press still tighter into him with a breathy gasp.

"Oh, Anne…" he sighed into her hair, lips finding the flutter below her ear. "This is even better than my dreams, and my dreams were getting pretty vivid by the end there."

She looked up into his gaze with a knowing flush, eyes growing greener as she contemplated her reply.

"What did you dream, Gil?"

He caught her blush, chuckling darkly.

"Darling, I hardly think that my foolish, fevered dreams are appropriate for sharing at this point…" his hazel eyes slid away from her, and he kissed her shoulder and throat in his evasion, though his hands bunched the material of her skirt reflexively.

"Did you dream of undressing me, Gilbert Blythe?" she offered with a new boldness, arching her neck to greet his kiss. "Or did I… undress… in front of you?"

His eyes flew wide at her suppositions, more accurate than she could possibly know. Or… perhaps she _did _know, seeing too much, now, of what over the years he had tried to hide from her… the hungry wanting beneath the surface of his hard-fought, gentlemanly decency.

Eyes locking with his, Anne stepped out of his grasp, hands going to her own waist, finding the few buttons that released her green skirt and her petticoat with it, to plunge soundlessly to the floor. She stepped slowly out of them, revealing herself clad in lacy bloomers and the sheerest stockings and satin shoes, the flash of her blue garter encasing her slim thigh, her hair streaming over her shoulders, looking both sylph and siren, both girl and goddess. His breath caught in his throat and lodged there painfully, too painfully for words, though his eyes and his look were a code she had long been able to interpret, and she closed the gap again between them, braver than brave, his audacious girl made perfect and potent whilst he stood there, prostrate with longing and bound by the invisible yoke of years.

"Did I undress _you _too, my darling?" she asked with a gentle smile, though her own eyes were feverish at the thought.

He hesitated for a heartbeat.

"Yes…" he managed thickly, the answer both moan and memory.

He might have thought, long ago, to try to dominate her, to initiate every overture, to rebuild some of the manhood she had unwittingly eroded during those awful later Redmond years, when her silence roared loudly in his ears and her taking up with Roy was a stab of malice to his heart. But that would not have been the Anne he loved, nor the way he wanted to love her. His most satisfying imaginings had had her coming to _him; _not in begging subjugation but lit by the light of a new understanding… that she wanted and needed him; that she had realised the rightness of their togetherness; that she finally saw that it was _he, _Gilbert, who was both her question and answer, as he had known she was to him all along… to come to him fully and gladly, to reach across that old divide and take his hand…

"Oh, Gil…" Anne breathed. "Were you seeing _my _dreams, too?"

He snapped back to attention at that, focussing, as he should have been, on _her _and not himself, too aware of her lily-scented movements as she now caressed his shirt as she had his vest and addressed his buttons here with the same nimble knowingness…

"You wanted to undress _me, _darling?I'm afraid I'm just a plain, ordinary man underneath, Anne-girl," he choked on his wry smile.

His shirt met the same fate as her skirt, floating to the floor with carefree abandon, and then the incredible moment when Anne commandeered his trousers and found those buttons, too, and divested him of this layer as well. And there he was, in underwear alone, his flesh singing under her wide-eyed appraisal.

"Not ordinary in _any _measure…" she murmured reverently. "You are beautiful, Gilbert Blythe."

* * *

_**Anne**_

* * *

_Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers. _***

_"Don't these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?" _

_Anne took them and buried her face in them. "Thank you, Gil. They're lovely. And yes, they do indeed. I'm in Mr. Silas Sloane's barrens this very minute," she said rapturously. _

_He chuckled softly, his gaze to her full of a fevered fondness. "I suppose you will be there in reality in a few days?" _

_"No, indeed, not for a fortnight. I'm going to visit with Phil in Bolingbroke before I go home. You'll be in Avonlea before I will." _

_He clasped his hands together – the hands that she secretly loved to contemplate – and looked away momentarily, sighing softly._

_"No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this summer, Anne. I've been offered a job in the Daily News office and I'm going to take it." _

_"Oh," said Anne sorrowfully. She wondered what a whole Avonlea summer would be like without Gilbert. Somehow she did not like the prospect. "Well," she concluded flatly, "it is a good thing for you, of course…" She rallied, trying her best to be pleased for him. "Infact, it's a wonderful opportunity. Congratulations, Gil." _

_"Thank you, Anne," he murmured, coloring faintly. "Yes, I've been hoping I would get it. It will help me out next year." _

_"You mustn't work too HARD," said Anne, with a warning schoolmarm smile. "You've studied very constantly this winter…" _

_She faltered under the sudden intensity of his gaze, uncertain and changing the subject inexpertly. _

"_Isn't this a delightful evening? Do you know, I found a cluster of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today? I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine."_

_"You are always discovering gold mines," said Gilbert, nudging her shoulder companionably._

_"Let us go and see if we can find some more," suggested Anne eagerly. "I'll call Phil and - "_

_"Never mind Phil and the violets just now, please, Anne," said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. "There is something I want to say to you."_

_The realisation hit her, then, both dread and dream. _

_"Oh, Gilbert…" she protested. "You don't have to say anything you're not ready to say…" _or that I'm not ready to hear, _she finished for herself._

_"I must. Things can't go on like this any longer. Anne, I love you. You know I do. I - I can't tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you'll be my wife?"_

_The air stilled around her and so too the breath within her. Oh, Gilbert… The desperation of his declaration was one she understood, too late, she had herself led him to. That his growing feelings for her - those very far from the schoolboy comrade or college chum – were things that he had attempted to express to her on numerous occasions, always politely and comprehensively rebuffed._

_And now… now it was her duty to let him down as gently as she could manage, hoping he would understand, hoping he would see that his importance to her was not diminished by her refusal, but made greater by it._

_"I - I can't," said Anne miserably, squeezing his hand as if she might instil her message through touch alone. "Oh, Gilbert – I'm so sorry. I can't promise that – to be your wife – not at this stage. Gil, we are still yet students ourselves… We have years of growth and change and learning… I'm still learning about myself. How can I promise myself to you or to anyone when I don't yet know who I am or what I'm meant to be?"_

_His dark brow frowned as he attempted to puzzle out her response, though nothing could erase the hurt that had begun to etch itself around his eyes and in the downturn of his mouth. She bit her lip against the sight of both._

_"Don't you care for me at all?" Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, though his intelligent eyes seem to burn her with his imploring stare, and his lean body hunched over as if fighting to process the troubling logic of her refusal._

_"Not - not in that way…" she stumbled, trying to make sense of her own feelings as she was articulating them. She sought refuge against his shoulder even as she was pushing him away with her words, wishing she could lean her head against his comforting bulk and help erase her guilt and absorb his distress. _

"_I do care a great deal for you as a friend. The most wonderful friend. I care for you and always will. But.. but.. I'm sorry, I don't love you, Gilbert."_

_"But can't you give me some hope that you will - yet?" the question was as a tremor she felt right down to her marrow._

_"I wish I could," exclaimed Anne desperately. "I wish I could love you - in that way - Gilbert. You deserve to be loved, and well. I wish I could be the one to do so."_

_There was another pause - so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven to look up at him again. Gilbert's face was white to the lips. And his eyes - but Anne shuddered and looked away, tears sparking her own. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or - horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert's face? _

_"Is there anybody else?" he asked at last in a low voice. _

"_No, Gil, honestly there isn't." She attempted to fill the terrible silence with the only assurances she could give him. "I don't care for anyone in that way, and I like you more than anybody. I like you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. You're my best friend. And we must - we must go on being friends. Please, please say that we can."_

_Gilbert gave a sad little grimace._

_"Friends…? I thought we were kindred spirits." He inclined his head, just so, to meet hers, and the whispered aside was like a prayer playing on the breeze. "Please say yes…"_

_"I'm sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert," was all Anne could say. _

_Gilbert released her hand gently._

_"There isn't anything to forgive. There have been times when I thought you did care. I've deceived myself... I fooled myself into thinking you loved me, that's all."_

"_Oh, Gil!" she cried. "You'll see I'm right, by and by, when you fall for someone else. And then you'll understand…"_

"_If THIS is understanding, then I'd rather remain ignorant for the rest of my days." He gave her a bleak look of hopelessness. Goodbye, Anne." _

"_Goodbye, Gil…" she answered sorrowfully._

_Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of her life. It was Gilbert's friendship, of course. She felt she had lost it, and him, forever. _

* * *

"You are beautiful, Gilbert Blythe."

Anne had attempted on many occasions to rewrite aspects of their shared history, through the lens of the love and understanding and new self-knowledge that had almost come too late. If Gilbert had spent years waiting for her, she had spent an equivalent time in gratitude for second chances, from the moment she knew he had survived his fever, fired by her own determination to never take him for granted again.

There were scores of little moments that she would rather not have as memories; his first, dread proposal being chief among them. They two, long ago, in another bedroom, had attempted to put their hurt and heartbreak aside to unpack that unfortunate incident and move beyond it, though that hadn't prevented her in occasional low moments since from trying to reclaim it from a gentler, more thoughtful perspective – the things she _wished _she'd said and done, casting a more mature Anne Shirley in her place.

If she was woman now as Anne _Blythe, _here before her stood the man she had known since boyhood. In the darkened bedroom lit by moonlight, twin lamps and their own aching awareness, she knew that she loved this man beyond all reason – irrefutably, undeniably and indeed, by her own previous admission, _scandalously. _

And it was indeed the scandalous, marvellous revelation to see him and know him, this way, for the first time.

There had been something in Gilbert's manner and bearing that had always spoken to her, even in the times when she fiercely denied hearing it; that dark brow arched in query; those curls calling to her to thread her fingers through them; that _splendid chin_ and that _teasing smile_ and those broad shoulders and that confident long legged gait. The smirk of amusement or satisfaction that played about his full lips. The ready humour of those _roguish hazel eyes._ And that quiet air of confidence and authority, as necessary a support to her now as her own breath.

She hadn't dared to let her imagination wander much father than the strength of his arms as he held her and the promise in his every kiss, through the long and longing years of their engagement, but here she was, belly tightening as a violin string to contemplate him, all her knowledge and understanding of him remade as she stared at this figure of her husband.

He was carved in strong, lean lines; the wide expanse of his shoulders dipping to his taut torso and narrowing to hips before plunging to muscled thighs and shapely calves. His skin was scented with musk and manhood; a unique and intoxicating blend flavoured with the memory of apple blossom and the salt-sea tang of their new home. If she reached out a hand she could caress the dark hair dusting his chest and snaking a line over belly and beyond, and wonder no more if it was of similar texture to the curls at his crown.

Anne _did _reach, trance-like, her fingers marvelling at the sculpted definition of the muscles that reacted by contracting beneath her touch… of the expanse of his chest and the planes of his hard stomach… the flex of his bicep and the smooth column of his neck, of the angle of his firm jaw, now clenched around the low breath he admitted as a hiss.

"Sweetheart…" he finally ventured, voice gravelly. "The beauty is all yours. You are… incandescent, Anne…"

"And you are honey, Gilbert…" she laid a pale, slim arm against him, smiling at the contrast in hue.

"And you are alabaster… you are pearl…" he sighed, allowing himself to reach out too, fingers playing along the string she still wore at her throat, before he reached behind and unsecured the clasp, drawing it back around her neck in a sweep that teased her cleavage before he took it and laid it gently on the bedside table closest to him.

Gilbert looked back to her with a question in his eyes and a promise in his smile, standing beside their bed and framed by the window that looked out to moon and sea and sandbar. His beautiful Blythe hand reached out for hers, drawing her to him across time and memory, beckoning her as boy he had been and man he now was; bridegroom to bride; husband to wife; lover to lover.

_Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears, __  
__And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries, - __  
__To-night, if I may guess, thy beauty wears __  
__A smile of such delight, __  
__As brilliant and as bright, __  
__As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes, __  
__Lost in soft amaze, __  
__I gaze, I gaze! _****

He had promised her poetry, but she couldn't later comprehensively say whether he recited the lines or she just heard them in her head, in time to her thundering heart and her sure steps towards him.

* * *

**Chapter Notes**

I dearly wanted to rewrite two key canon scenes, for the longest time, and you now have them here. I have referenced both in the main T-rated section of this story **(**_**Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd)**_as key moments for Anne and Gilbert and their relationship, and cherished being able to reclaim both episodes a little for myself – and perhaps for our couple, too.

This story title is taken from John Keats' _Ode to Fanny, _one of many poems in his short life dedicated to his celebrated great love, Fanny Brawne. She is depicted in (one of) the filmed versions of his story, _Bright Star _(2009)by Australian Abbie Cornish (with a lovely early outing from Ben Whishaw as Keats).

*from John Keats _To Fanny_

**this scene of course from _Anne of Green Gables _(Ch 28) 'An Unfortunate Lily Maid', with my additions throughout

***with a sigh from _Anne of the Island _(Ch 20) 'Gilbert Speaks', with my additions (and some substitutions!) throughout

****John Keats _Ode to Fanny_


	2. Chapter 2 Adoring

**Author's Note**

_Thank you for your wonderful responses to this and my other stories, and for those who have generously followed me back and forth from A03 as I begin to post __**Let Love clasp Grief **__over there. This is my first actual Anne and Gilbert love scene, although the previous M chapter and Ch 20 of the T section are also part of this long dance of many movements. And wasn't it a long, long dance in canon too for Anne and Gil!_

_I am not at heart an explicit writer, and this even so is still mild and tender rather than hot and sizzling. I hope it suffices all the same and that, most importantly, it matches the tone of its parent story, and captures something of the essence of Anne and Gilbert's relationship, which is, ultimately, what we all come back for._

_This chapter is dedicated to __**Excel Aunt,**__ who has understood so well what I am trying to do here; she said, so eloquently, that for these two 'the experience is its own revelation.' I so hope it is._

_With love_

_MrsVonTrapp x_

* * *

**Chapter Two**

_**Adoring**_

_So let me be thy choir, and make a moan_

_Upon the midnight hours _*

* * *

_**Anne**_

* * *

Their marriage bed gave way gently as Gilbert drew her into his lap, in the same loving manner of countless times before, when their perch might have been the cold ground or a hollow log or a field of wildflowers. Now, though, his hands could leisurely span rib and waist and hip, his long fingers playing upon each and his smile carrying a trace of his delight as they migrated to the lacy gathering at her thigh.

"Anne-girl…" he rumbled, eyes sparking, "w_hat _do we have here?"

She gave an embarrassed little laugh. "_Diana. _For luck."

"I see…" his fingers moved beneath the blue garter, running over the width of it, tracing over the specially embroidered horseshoe. "Should it come off now, do you think, Mrs Blythe?"

Anne gave a breathy titter. "I think it must."

He nodded thoughtfully, as if upon receipt of some sage wisdom, and inched it down agonisingly slowly, over knee and down calf, whilst her eyes followed the progress of his warm, brown hands as their touch left a streak of heat upon her skin even through her stockings, like a darting flame passing over her. _Did you not flame and I catch fire? _** she contemplated, burning at the mere thought, knowing that it had always been _his _touch alone that kindled these desires. Gilbert reached the obstruction of her satin shoe and didn't hesitate to remove this as well, so that shoe and garter and other shoe were banished to somewhere beside the bed, and she wondered whether all their combined clothing was the shedding of their skin, leaving them smooth and shiny underneath; remade in the new knowledge of one another.

Her fingers came to the irresistible cut of his shoulders, stroking the muscles and feeling the corded strength here and of neck and arms, before moving up to tickle his ear with her breath and finding his temple with a kiss. Her mouth slid down to his cheek, slightly prickly now and studded with stubble, her lips tingling as she rubbed them across it.

Gilbert paused, closing his eyes and sucking in a breath, relaxing, finally, into her touch. His long lashes swept shadows onto his cheeks and the soft lamplight turned his skin golden; the sculptured perfection of his profile would have been intimidating had she not known the kindness, humour and goodness of the man within. At her prolonged silent perusal his Adam's apple bobbed up and down with some ferocity, and, fascinated, Anne kissed this, too, and the moan that came from his throat hummed against her lips, vibrating his need of her as potently as a thousand love sonnets.

"Anne…" she didn't know if her name was declaration or question, but she answered it anyway by wrapping her slim white arms around his neck, fingers in his hair, holding on as his own kiss greeted her, hot and seeking and a little desperate.

"Gil…" she echoed, smiling against his lips, even as her breathed hitched to his hands back at her thigh, at the border of her bloomers, as he began to tug at her stockings, still gently but with some resolution now. And then there was nothing but long bare legs, which he scooped up closer towards him, running his hands up and down them with a fervent reverence.

"Oh, Anne…" he whispered into her collarbone, cradled there as she was herself held by him. "You are like a silken thread…" he raised his hazel eyes to search hers. "To hold you like this… to _touch _you like this…"

_To love you like this… _was the thought unspoken, and the query she still read in his face and his tone; this darling, wonderful man, still asking, even now, some sort of permission; where others might take or demand or cajole or simply expect, as the natural order of things, he… Gilbert… was forever putting her before himself.

"Yes…" Anne affirmed with a loving look she hoped was encouragement and confirmation both, infused with her own burgeoning awareness. "_Yes, _my beloved…"

His hand around her waist she grasped and held up to her, as if a hovering promise, interlocking their fingers and then pressing them to her chemise.

Gilbert found her small, pointed breast, his hand spanning it with insulting ease; she might have wished to be more shapely and certainly more full here if nowhere else, and had always feared he would feel this, too, but the flare lighting his hazel eyes rather spoke otherwise. It was, of course, not the first time he had touched her here; through never ending layers his wondrous reaction had permeated her more than the touch itself, but his warm hand was here, now, shockingly real… stroking and cupping, thumb grazing, until in the one audacious action he had undone the top ribbon and whisked the entire filmy garment over her head.

The coolness and the heat both came as a rush; to be exposed like this before him, but also to be free. She might have been embarrassed but for the adoring expression on his face, which made every inhibition melt away. Gilbert's long, beautiful fingers splayed against her spine, entwining in her hair, whilst blanketing every inch of skin with his seeking lips, until his mouth encased the rosebud tip of her breast and her involuntary gasp sent her arching backwards, them both sinking back into the bed.

_Let lips do what hands do… _*** the Shakespeare came to her, unbidden, and she might have smiled at the saucy allusion if her nerve endings weren't buzzing in a frenzied dance, clouding every coherent thought. Gilbert had stretched out his long length beside her, hand on her hip whilst his dark curls brushed her quivering skin and the sight of his head bent over her as he concentrated his entire being on one peak and then the next… _Oh. My. Stars. _The stubble that had tingled against her lips now rubbed roughly against her delicate, waking flesh, and his tongue made scandalous swirls in all directions. It was wonderful. It was unbearably wonderful. She tried to articulate her feelings but instead only managed a few shallow, strangled breaths.

"Gil… oh _Gil!" _she grasped his hair, overwhelmed by the assault of sensation.

"My darling…" he gasped, seeking her eyes, lean face flushed with both pleasure and a primeval sort of triumph.

"Gil…" she echoed helplessly.

"Sweetheart…" he gave her a slow, maddening grin. "Where shall I love you next, do you think?"

She made a little _o _of astonishment, grey eyes rounding at the mere suggestion. He didn't bother waiting on her answer, but swept his hot, hungry lips to one shoulder and then the other, dipping to an audacious trail down the hollow of her throat and onwards between her breasts to the soft, pale belly peeking from beneath her bloomers. He nuzzled the waistband with his mouth in tremendous tease, running his tongue beneath it, making her squirm and clench her insides and then huff her exasperation at him.

"_GilbertBlythe_!" his name was a rush of breath that tried very hard to be some sort of admonishment. "You're _enjoying _this!"

"In _so _many ways, Anne-girl…" there was a smirk in his tone but not in his expression, which grew immediately shadowed to contemplate her, confused and overwhelmed on the bed beside him.

He propped himself on one elbow, gathering her into him.

"I'm sorry, my love… is this too fast?"

"No…" she protested unconvincingly, and his face fell in on itself.

"Oh, Anne, I…"

"Gil, just… could we take a moment?" She fought to control a weird flutter of panic. "Oh, this is just… _ridiculous!"_

"_Anne?" _his brows had drawn together in consternation.

"Only that we've waited _years _for this, and I just – "

"Have cold feet?" he joked kindly, struggling for a smile.

She gave a nervous laugh, clutching his free hand.

"Not _cold…" _she explained earnestly, grip desperately tight. "Rather the opposite. I'm too … _feverish_… too… ready to self combust! I don't want to _explode, _Gil!"

"I rather think you might _like_ to, Anne-girl…" he breathed into her ear, nibbling on her lobe. "Isn't that what we've always done, together?"

At her silence he paused to note her face.

"You waited _years _for me to realise my feelings, Gil… I just think I'm back there again, running after you, trying to catch up."

* * *

_**Gilbert**_

* * *

She couldn't know how he clenched his jaw at her admission, fool that he was, rushing in as fools did. Believing that his love and ardour would be enough to overcome any awkwardness; he hadn't allowed for nerves except for his own. This was Anne Shirley – no, Anne _Blythe_ – his brave, beautiful girl, forever marching forward, fierce and fearless.

And there it was… his brain rushed to process this elemental truth… Anne was always at her best when she led from the front. Hadn't he been proudest of his own achievements when coming in second to hers? When _she _set the pace and tone, as before, standing by their marriage bed, eyes drinking him as she confidently separated him from his clothing, she was sure of herself and of him.

_Slow… steady… sure…_

He almost rolled his eyes to think that his father's old, homespun wisdom was haunting him, even now, but it had not failed him yet, and this might be its most important test. Or, rather, _his._

"I'm sorry, Anne. Sweetheart, I'm sorry…" He buried his face in her neck, suddenly shamed.

"There's nothing to be sorry _for, _my love."

He wished desperately that was the case, but in the moment he felt the very embodiment of the careless, hot blooded groom.

"Darling…" he ventured, drawing away from her generous embrace, voice descending with every syllable. "Would… you like… to touch _me _instead?"

Anne took a long, laboured breath, eyes serious as they searched his.

"Gil… really… I wouldn't know where to start." She was all blushing, charming chagrin.

"Here, Anne-girl…" he manoeuvred the quilt over them to act as cocoon, finally sheltering them from their uncertainty. "You start _here, _with my heart, which you made yours long ago…"

His arm went around her, drawing her into him, and her silken hair fell in a wave across his chest as he felt her cool cheek search for and rest against his heart. Her breasts and belly pressed into him, maddeningly, and he slowed his breaths, closing his eyes against the temptation to grasp her tightly and find a home for this building fire within him, for he felt flung on a pyre, and might well begin to burn from the inside for wanting her.

He frowned to himself. Had he learned _nothing _all these years of wait and want?

He felt convinced he could hear his own heart above their breaths and the sound of the sea on the air. And yet, Anne's thoughts had taken a different biological bent.

"You're so _hot_, Gil…" she murmured against his skin.

"Is that… a good thing?" his throat was raw.

"Mmm…" he felt her smile. "I _knew _you would warm me."

"Just… not overcook you?"

Their sudden laughter steadied them both; their ship righting itself, back on course.

Gilbert swallowed, painfully, grateful to not have beached himself, and trying to keep his hands polite, though his fingers could hardly help their passage as they stepped up and down the ladder of her spine. He felt Anne sigh and snuggle deeper into him, which was an exquisite agony, for as she relaxed he felt a new spark at her every movement.

It took him a moment to realise it, but there is was, unmistakable – her lips brushing, feather-light, against the dark hair shading his chest. Then again… longer, lingering. Fine, pale fingers sought out the planes of his torso, traced the outline of his ribs, before she bestowed a hundred tiny, tremendous, taunting kisses all over his stomach and hips and then paused in their own passage at the waistband of his underwear.

"Anne…" his breath was plosive and pained. "Oh… _Anne…"_

"_Gil..?"_

"Yes, Anne… Lord, _yes…"_

He had answered her own unexpressed question resoundingly, barely able to contain his reaction to the mere thought. To have Anne's hands on him in any measure was both wonder and torment; but to have her even contemplate touching him _there… _there where only his dreams of them had dared go … was a reality he could hardly process. In the end she offered just a whispering touch through material; a palm running lightly over him, but he still jerked involuntarily, hissing his frustration. He looked up to see her, face wondering at him, a poker of prostrate passion beside her. She raised the one delicate, knowing brow, not mockingly, but with the look he knew so well, of a point well made, or even of an argument won.

"Are you enjoying this, Gilbert?" she asked, voice low.

He gave a dark chuckle.

"_Touche_, Mrs Blythe."

He ran a hand through his damp curls, steadying himself enough to give a wry smile.

"I'm afraid I'm no expert here, Anne, remember."

Her heart seemed to leap into her eyes at the admission, and the vulnerability he couldn't hide in his deep, wavering voice. Her smile to him in the moment was possibly the sweetest thing he had ever known. She crawled back up to him, sliding her arms around his neck again in that bravery he knew and loved so, pressing her whole self into him closer and then closer still, so that she could undoubtedly feel every striving inch of his arousal.

"Aren't we learning together, Gil, my love?" her husky admission accompanied her trusting kiss, and he was entirely, utterly lost.

Slowly, surely, though perhaps not entirely steadily, Gilbert learned to love his wife. To decode gasp and moan and sigh, to interpret cues to surge and retreat, to even manage his own tangled emotions and driving desire. His broad brown hands coaxed by lily white ones helped divest him of his underwear, and then hers, and then it was just they too, flesh to flesh, hot and aching and amazed and adoring. Turning them into the mattress, he finally felt her lithe, lovely body blanketed by his own, marvelling at his bulk compared to her slight form; how their differing heights at this angle were more complimentary than he had realised, as if enacting an ancient symmetry; and how her awed, beautiful look as she gazed up at him was a memory he might carry with him to his grave.

"Gil…" Anne shuddered, arching into him as his deep kiss diverted again from her mouth to the hollow of her throat.

"Darling…" he murmured, inhaling her, nose pressed to skin as if trying to absorb her.

"_Gil…?" _

It was a strumming sensation to kiss her this way, withholding nothing from her or himself; to finally give free rein to his feelings once she was ready for them and having her reciprocate with an undaunted passion that he surely didn't deserve.

"Gorgeous girl…" he answered, travelling down and down still, lips leaving a trail of his desire, skirting briefly over flat belly to land on her thigh. His kisses here had her gasping with quick, shallow breaths, rubbing her legs together as if to ward off her own sensations… or encourage more. When his lips found the red curls of his curious imaginings, the shivery sigh escaping her reverberated within him, too.

"Gilbert…"

Her eyes were a blazing emerald as he finally met them with his own, and there was a silent moment of connection, when everything else fell away to reveal he, and Anne, and the inevitable.

It always had seemed to him to be a terrible contradiction, even a cruelty, that the moment of greatest love between them would come with pain for her. That in loving her fully, completely, wholly, he would first have to hurt her. He had agonised over it, perhaps unduly, and how much she might understand, forgetting of course her intrinsic understanding of _him._

"I love you, Gilbert Blythe," she whispered, as if reading his torn indecision on his face. "Love _me, _Gil."

"I love you, Anne… I… love… you, I…"

Words were superfluous now, and he couldn't have summoned any if his life had depended on it. There were only scattered thoughts he couldn't pin down… _his at last… was he worthy…? if he failed her…unafraid… _****

He _was _afraid, now, at the very point of no return, but he was also falling… falling … his guide rope unravelling at speed, and the depths waiting for him, and Anne his anchor.

* * *

**Chapter Notes**

*John Keats from _Ode to Psyche _

**A.S. Byatt _Possession _(1990) (Ch 28)

It remains one of the most amazing reading experiences of my life, and twenty years after my first encounter it is still a novel to both dip into and luxuriate in. The film adaptation is also utterly wonderful. I have also referenced it in my other story _Betwixt the Stars_, where my notes rather fixated on Jeremy Northam. Understandably.

***William Shakespeare _Romeo and Juliet _(Act 1 Sc 5)

****_Anne's House of Dreams _(Ch 4)


	3. Chapter 3 Enflaming

**Author's Note:**

_The world continues to spin off its axis, doesn't it? I hope everyone is healthy and safe. Thank you for your readership in these 'worst of times' and for tuning in for this final M instalment. The story will now be completed after one more T rated chapter. That will be quite a moment for me!_

_Dedicating this chapter to Lucy Maud Montgomery, who passed away on April 24__th__ 1942, and to my forever Gilbert, Jonathan Crombie, who passed away five years ago on April 15__th__ 2015\. LMM brought me to Jonathan, and Jonathan brought me to fanfic x_

_Thank you for your lovely responses to this little M adventure and its parent story, and hoping I won't keep you waiting so long for an update again!_

_With love_

_MrsVonTrapp x_

* * *

**Chapter Three**

_**Enflaming**_

"_Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,__  
__Withhold no atom's atom or I die…"_ *

* * *

_**Anne**_

* * *

The pre-dawn stillness called to her, though the wind had settled and even the sea was still. Waking in her marriage bed, Anne took a moment to adjust to reality, the delicious dream that was the night before too vivid and visceral to shake off easily.

Grey eyes opened to indistinct, foreign shadows, not yet familiar friends. The dresser; the trunks; the side table on which perched her pearls; the upholstered chair covered with clothing; the open window; the apple-leaf quilt tucked in around her, and beside her…

_Gilbert…_

A grin like a sunburst escaped from her, but turning over made her intake a sharp, surprised breath, suddenly feeling every single muscle in her body protest this endeavour. And all for nought, at any rate. There was no groom slumbering peacefully on the opposite pillow; no mussed dark curls to run her fingers through; no tantalisingly handsome husband awaiting her adoring kiss.

She swallowed slowly, fighting her instantaneous disappointment; the taste of lemon on her tongue and not the honey she had bargained on. Her vision of the two of them had always held the idea of Gilbert staring down at her as she slept, his very presence enough to rouse her, to draw her into his strong, waiting arms… or for she to wake _him_, as if a fairy tale reversed, with her lips pressed to his in both remembrance and promise.

She turned back, head resting on the pillow, fighting the wash of forlorn feeling threatening to submerge her. There would undoubtedly be a rational explanation for his disappearance, this moment of all moments, and living with him she would have, on occasion, learn to bide her time. But not now, and not for these precious weeks that were theirs alone. She would seek him out.

But first… a wash. Anne threw off the covers and stared down at herself in startled mystification that became knowing, burning blush, the flood of memory still breathlessly real. In their little washroom she paused wonderingly by the glass, noting contours that seemed softer and gentler today, after Gilbert's hands and lips had loved her; musing upon how she could feel so different - so absolutely changed in every respect - and yet ostensibly look the same. And how, doing what they had done – and having everyone know full well what they would spend these weeks doing – she could ever hope to face any townsfolk now or in the future.

She put a curious finger to slightly swollen lips, passed the back of her palm over the pink-hued patches around her mouth where stubble had scratched the skin smooth; traced further down, as he had, to newly sensitive breasts, smiling to remember Diana's words about this, too. She clutched her stomach; rubbed gently at her thighs; noted a million tiny areas of tenderness that had not been there before. There was a dull ache, too, when she moved a certain way that felt indescribably marvellous; as if her body held the memory, now and always, of the moment it had joined with his.

Her streaming hair needed rather more attention than she had reckoned on, without its securing nightly braid, but she brushed it and left it untethered, as Gilbert had breathed to her he best liked it. By the time she found her special nightgown, one of two homemade honeymoon ensembles she had spent many happy hours over – determining that Phil Blake's own contribution to her trousseau would indeed, as she had warned, be saved for later – the first streaks of light were appearing on the horizon, and the birds were sleepily proclaiming the new day. The air was cool, far cooler than Avonlea, and she was glad of the warming cotton and lace, though the final effect was unexpectedly demure, and this made her unexpectedly uneasy. She had just lain with her husband and wanted to instil that same passion anew, not swathe herself in layers that might ward him off.

Then again… he might prefer to unwrap his package _himself _this time, she all but grinned, biting her lip at the prospect.

Turning her back on the scene of so many revelations last night, Anne padded towards the door, her bare foot brushing against something petal-soft on the floor. Bending to examine it, she found indeed that it was a single rose petal, boldly blood red, beginning a trail that she noted threaded out of the room, along the landing… and down the stairs.

_Gilbert…_ his very name on her lips lit something inside her, and she soundlessly, breathlessly, followed where he called.

* * *

_**Gilbert**_

* * *

If Gilbert had imagined this scene in his head a million times, the exquisite agony of his heart squeezed in his chest was something he hadn't quite reckoned on. Staring down at Anne as she slept; his best friend, his new bride, and now… lover. How one slight girl-woman – for Anne Blythe, no less than Anne Shirley, still seemed to be forever part wood nymph to him – could house, as he himself had whispered to her, all his _fears, and hopes, and joys… _** To have had her absorb every midnight exultation as well as uncertainty, and pass it back to him as reassuring love-faith… He swallowed hard, wondering how any other time could possibly equal this moment of perfect happiness.

It was utter, unbearable temptation to watch her breathe softly and not put his mouth on hers; to stand strong against that adorable nose adorned with seven perfect freckles; to see the tendrils of her hair stir and not wrap his finger around them; to know that the quilt he secured around her now hid from him all the delights of her naked form he had only newly discovered. And that he would do anything to be able to read those grey orbs of hers, currently shut button-tight against him.

He groaned softly to himself, dark hair resting back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating his new circumstances with a wistful smile that turned wolfish with remembered pleasure. His father, Fred, Jonas… all had hinted at this transition to true manhood, though none had quite encapsulated how he could feel both strong and shattered, both king and court jester, or how maddeningly his body already hummed again in accord with hers, forever destined to strain towards her as his heart always had.

_How _would he ever get any doctoring done, when all his thoughts, let alone his body, ran in such directions?

Gilbert sighed softly. That was not a question for now. He would let nothing intrude upon their few precious weeks together, especially not when they had paid the price for them in endless years of waiting.

He had already concocted his plan the previous evening, watching Anne amongst the blooms in their garden, knowing he had somehow to bring her beloved outdoors in, to give his dryad a little piece of home. He inched out of their bed slowly - _their _bed! - and grinned boyishly at their clothes strewn around the floor, taking an almost perverse pride in the way convention had been abandoned to passion.

He stood at the glass in their private washroom, hazel eyes bright with new knowledge and understandings. Of the universe… of himself… of Anne. She had always been a revelation to him, but never more so than their wedding night, when in his arrogance - or, to be kinder to himself, his naivete - he had thought to be the one to guide and lead, only to find how very much more nuanced and delicate a matter it all really was. That it was not a thing of defined roles, but of an exchange… a dance… an evolving conversation… and a secret code of signs and signals, read in touch and sighs and looks and whispers.

_Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,__  
__To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,__  
__Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,__  
__Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath… _***

Of course, he noted with chagrin, the lines would come to him now, when his own breath wasn't strangled in his throat and his own head not nestled between the soft, milk-pale peaks of…

_Stop! Get a hold of yourself, Blythe!_

He grimaced, rolled his eyes and splashed himself with cold water, shaving hastily and tip toeing back into their room to find his trousers. He wouldn't even bother with a shirt, let alone underwear… he wanted to be quick with his mission and back by her side again before she woke, so that they would both resurface together, marvelling at the veritable bower of blooms the fairies had left them.

Outside the sea air was bracing, to say the least, and the gooseflesh rippled along his bare arms. Gilbert shuffled about, shoeless, smiling stupidly at the _cold feet _allusion that seemed to follow him, and squinting in the pre-dawn to guess the color of the roses he was plucking. He glanced about to the other floral offerings, blindly snapping off twigs and severing bushes with a careless abandon that would, ironically, rather horrify his wife… but needs must. And he was _freezing._

He hobbled back inside, carefully depositing his bounty and rubbing his hands together. _Warmth. _He thought longingly of the warmth upstairs, both metaphorical and literal, pausing to imagine himself back cuddling into Anne's sleeping form in their cosy bed, before giving himself a stern rebuke and getting on with his grand idea.

In half an hour he had coaxed a fantastic fire to warm the room, had silently crept back up the stairs to lay a trail of rose petals literally at Anne's feet, and had festooned the archway between sitting room and dining room with a makeshift trellis of branches and flowers uneasily secured by some string placed between two old picture hooks.

He stood back for a moment to admire his handiwork, and that's when he heard her.

* * *

Gilbert turned, and for a moment all Anne saw was the guileless Gil of a hundred summers; tall and tanned; hair awry; roguish eyes; teasing smile; expression knowing he'd been caught out in some schoolboy mischief. And then… her eyes were drawn to the archway above him, beautifully bedecked in multicolored blooms, their perfume already teasing her senses; a wonderful natural canopy of _his _making… for _her._

Gilbert turned, and all he saw was an angelic vision with streaming hair and white billowing nightgown; _his _Anne, now, in very possible way; known but perhaps always slightly unknowable. He could have looked upon her forever, lingering upon the shadow-form beneath her beautiful, voluminous shift, watching how it moved with her, but instead he sought her eyes. He needed to _see _her… he needed to know that all was well and right with her… and between them.

He gulped painfully to see her tears.

"_Anne?" _he was aghast.

"Oh, G-Gilbert…" she visibly struggled, "you did _all _this?"

His immediate relief exited as a plosive breath, and then he allowed himself a small smile.

"Surprise…" he shrugged sheepishly.

"Oh, Gil…"

It was always wrenching to see her tears, but these ones were rather in a good cause, and soon gave way to her delighted exclamations as she came to him; a rustle of material and the whisper of her bare feet, and those eyes shining up at him, always his guide and anchor both.

"You were meant to stay in bed…" he mock-chastised.

"You were meant to wake up with me…" she baited in turn.

"I meant to… oh, my love, I'm sorry, I so wanted to be beside you when you woke – "

"Gilbert Blythe! You created a cathedral of flowers here! The most amazing, romantic gesture I've ever known, and _you _are the one apologising?"

"Sorry, Mrs Blythe," his mouth tugged, conceding the joke.

"Thank you, my beloved," she breathed.

"You're welcome, my darling…"

She was so close her nightgown brushed him as she swayed. He could feel the heat of her and smell the sweet-spice of their combined scents.

"You're trembling, Gil…" she lay a pale hand on his bare brown arm.

"Must be the cold…" he choked, smile striving for wry.

"Must be…" she smiled slyly, even as her face flushed under his fired gaze and the warmth of the nearby flames.

"Are you…?" he stumbled as she walked her fine fingers up to his bare bicep, his breath uneven as she paused to consider the muscles flexing under her touch, remembering those arms gripping her tightly with both purpose and desperation only hours ago.

"Am I?" she cocked her head to the side in question.

"Are you… _alright,_ Anne?" the question tightened his lovely lips and shadowed his eyes. "I know there was pain for you, and there must be discomfort now, and I - "

Anne put her finger to his lips, silencing further recriminations.

"_O, the sweetness of the pain!" _**** she thought, but did not say, cherishing the memory of his tender strength.

"Fast and fleeting, _Doctor _Blythe," she instead warned with a smile. "Now stop diagnosing me, and start _kissing _me…"

His relieved grin broke through.

"Your wish, my command, Mrs Blythe…" the smile was still on his lips as they lowered to hers.

* * *

_**Gilbert**_

* * *

Gilbert meant to be the careful, considered lover of the night before, when every approach was a courtly enquiry; a stone skimming across the pond, the ripples a gentle flow of tremulous desire directed at his bride. But the sandbank of denial had been breached, now, and with it a torrent of need flooded him, transferring to Anne whose lithe body he grasped, hands roaming where only his imagination had previously ventured. The soft cotton was a lovely but maddening encumbrance, and Anne shivered as he seized her buttocks through the material, squeezing and moulding them to his will, and as he lifted her up against his arousal her moan into his mouth nearly unravelled him.

"Anne…" he gasped, "if you want me to stop, if you need more rest or – "

"Gilbert!" she managed between his hard, fevered kisses, which she was replying to in kind, "if you stop now I… I am going to take that foliage above us and hit you over the head with it!"

"You are _always _resorting to violence, Anne-girl," he smirked with new satisfaction, to which slim arms, flung around his neck, squeezed more tightly, and he feared they would topple backwards together onto the floorboards.

"Anne…" he offered hoarsely, lips buried in her hair. "Another minute or so of this and we are not going to make it back to that bed upstairs."

"Who said anything about a _bed, _Gilbert Blythe?"

He felt his eyebrows migrate to his hairline, pausing in his kisses, which had moved to her throat, to properly contemplate her.

"Sweetheart, you don't mean…?" he let the speculation drift in the air as a swirling question, his delighted surprise evident.

Anne let her palm rest on his cheek, the knowing gleam greening her eyes.

"Didn't you propose to me with talk of our own _hearth-fire, _Gilbert? Well, my darling, here it is, and here we are."

His slow smile was fully appreciative of such irrefutable logic.

"And here _you _are, my love," he took her hand from his cheek, pressing it to his bare chest, over his heart. "I can't believe I can properly share everything with you, now. I want to _be _everything to you, Anne. As you have always been to me."

"You _are, _Gilbert. You are mine, and I am yours… All that I am, and all that I have, I give to thee…"

Their kiss was a sealed pact that melted in the face of their mounting feelings.

"I love you, Gilbert."

His look was unbearably tender.

"I know." *****

* * *

_**Them**_

* * *

From a cathedral of flowers they moved to build an altar of cushions and assorted soft furnishings, dragging across a rug, requisitioning the throw and positioning all with a gleeful air, as if children building an impenetrable citadel, preparing to sequester themselves even as the world was stirring around them. Anne tossed her husband covert glances that stole her breath; wanting to linger upon his beautiful lines and sculptural form; noticing how his trousers barely clung onto his slim hips, and tingling with an anticipation that was heady and new. It was only they two and the flames, the hearth indeed warm enough to chase away stray drafts, though nothing could chase away the flicker of awe in Gilbert's beloved hazel eyes.

"It's a lovely nightgown, Anne," his fingers coaxed the lace at her cuffs and his breath teased the ribbon at her collarbone. "You made it?"

"Yes…" she confirmed, answer a shaky quiver, watching as his thumb traced over her wrist.

"Beautiful…" his lips found their favourite haunt; the rapid, racing pulse behind her ear.

"There's another…" she explained unnecessarily, arching her neck. "And also one from… Phil."

"_Phil _gave you a _nightgown?_" he was sufficiently diverted to raise a wondering grin, looking to her in question.

"Not just _any _nightgown, I'll have you know…"

"Well, _this _isn't just any nightgown, either," he affirmed generously, "though I still prefer what's underneath."

Anne could have blushed but held firm, her new experience in such matters emboldening, and instead her benign smile tilted in challenge.

Gilbert Blythe was not one to miss his cue, especially now, chuckling with dark delight.

"May I, Mrs Blythe?"

Long fingers, deft and dextrous as her own had been the previous evening, eagerly loosened the ivory ribbon, and the gathered, scooped neckline widened and dipped, exposing collarbone and shoulders to his lingering kisses. The nightgown needed but little coaxing to be inched down to her waist. And there, in the new day by their own fireside, Anne Blythe's milk-pale beauty was laid bare.

The air hummed around them and the fire crackled, and Anne's pale cheeks were infused with the heat of Gilbert's adoring appraisal.

"You are… the most beautiful woman I've ever seen…" he murmured, his baritone wavering.

"And how many women have you actually _seen, _Gil?" her arch reply hid her embarrassment, though her small, shy, gratified smile took the sting from it.

"Just you… in my dreams…" he breathed, reaching for her, flesh pressed to singing flesh, "again and again and again…"

His mouth hovered and then seized, remembering his trail of the night before, lips teasing and tongue swirling, until Anne arched backwards with a strangled little cry that made him throb with wanting. Soft fair peaks brushed the dark curls dusting his chest, and the effect was maddening for both of them.

"_That shape, that fairness…__  
__That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast…" _ * he murmured against her satin skin, as she tugged impatiently at his hair.

"How long have you wanted to say _those _lines of Keats?"

She felt his pleased, throaty laugh as a buzzing through his lips, as his mouth made study of every inch of her narrow torso, fingers tracing over ribs as if a pianist over their keys, until, unable to stand it, she broke away to kiss him in kind, grazing his throat and nipping at his shoulder with her teeth, feeling him shudder.

"Anne!" he sucked in a sharp breath. _"I cry your mercy!" _ *

"I'm sure you _will_," she gave him a look evidently pleased with itself, hand running from his curls, across impossible shoulders, down the broad, strong back to dip beneath his trousers, her palm passing along his behind and up again to tease fingers at his waistband.

She looked up to him in the same silent question as before, unable to break from his darkening gaze as her hand plunged again beneath, connecting briefly with wiry curls and throbbing manhood, which seemed to spring to life at her touch.

Gilbert pressed his whole self against her with a guttural groan, his kiss deep and desperate, frantically pulling at her nightdress with his hands until it was only she, unadorned, cradled in his grip. His knees sagged, in either design or relief, taking her with him, falling back into the cushions with her in an ungainly sprawl, unconsciously mirroring their actions on the sofa above them only the previous evening.

With a longing, laughing look Anne ineffectually tugged at his trousers, obviously affronted now by their very existence, and Gilbert happily obliged her, shucking them off and making great show of tossing them away as far as possible, before sinking further down with her into their makeshift bedding.

Hot and heated, kiss for kiss for kiss, they struggled for breath and she could barely make sense of his question.

"Is it comfortable enough?" he whispered into her ear, clasping her hips to him.

"_Comfortable?"_

"The cushions."

Her smile was indulgent, though her reply carried more than a trace of her old, impassioned schoolgirl romanticism.

"I'd lie on a bed of _rocks_ for you if needed."

He grinned his gorgeous grin, the one that sparked the light in his eyes.

"Hopefully that _won't _be required," he heaved a breath. "Plenty of actual _sand_ on that shoreline down below us."

"Are you suggesting, Doctor Blythe…" Anne had to work hard to form the words, given her mind was spinning as his lips traced a determined path down down down to arrive at the inside of her thigh, "that we might explore the _beach _in our… er… _married _capacity?"

His eyes smiled in the firelight as he raised them to hers.

"It's no mere suggestion, _Mrs _Blythe," he thrilled, still, to voice her new title, loving the way it bound them together as much as any physical act ever could. "I hereby inform you that I intend to make love to you in every part of this house, and half of Four Winds besides."

He inched himself along her body, gathering her close with his broad hands, lying beside her and exalting in every soft contour and the Botticelli-esque blanket of hair he could easily lose himself in.

"You'd openly invite such scandal when we've only just gotten here?" Anne was all innocent wide eyes and coy look, biting her bottom lip in mirth as she turned into him, fingers stroking his chest suggestively.

"Oh, I think a little scandal could be fun, before we settle down to become responsible pillars of the community…" his hands roamed over her, sure and seeking, making her gasp in excited expectation. "And anyway…" Gilbert dipped his head to kiss temple, throat and breast in turn, "didn't you say you were _scandalously _in love with me?"

"Y-yes…" Anne stuttered, losing her train of thought in his demanding kiss.

"Well, then…" he paused, abandoning further desire to talk, when it only interrupted his lips on hers.

Slowly, eagerly, their bodies gravitated closer to their point of connection, slick and warm from the fire and the new heat from one another. Gilbert hovered over her, no longer in uncertainty but merely in question, wanting his quest to find the innermost reaches of her - and thus to find himself - to be perfectly timed to her breathless request, although his iron command on himself was slipping, even as he cleaved to her.

Her eyes held him with a surety that might bolster him for a lifetime.

"I… love you… Anne…" he breathed as he lowered himself, carefully and cherishingly, not so much needing anchor, in the moment, as safe passage.

"I love you, Gilbert…" the love was on her lips and in her eyes, and absolutely in the lithe, lovely arms and legs wrapped around him, drawing him into her with only the softest hesitant gasp.

Words gave way to the coming tide… to wave, to surge, to swell. The roar sounded in their ears, and the ripples lapped them after, where they lay, his dark, tousled curls damp against her skin as Anne cradled him to her, drifting off, ready for his faithful, loving kiss when they awoke together.

* * *

**Chapter Notes**

*John Keats _To Fanny_

**Keats _Ode to Fanny _Gilbert here echoes his wedding speech.

***Keats _Bright Star _(which is, of course, for Fanny)

****Keats _Lines to Fanny_

*****You know you know this line. Famously ad-libbed by Harrison Ford in one of his finest onscreen moments.

* * *

**And some correspondence…**

Thank you to all the lovely guests who have left comments for this diversion and on _Let Love clasp Grief. _I have attempted to address those for the M chapters here and will touch base with all others when we get back to the T section for the last chapter. And as for my faithful reviewers and friends… thank you, as always x

_To Elisa: _Thank you! So glad you enjoyed this!

_To Astrakelly: _Thank you for your lovely encouragement, here and on the main story. I _did _manage to write more… sorry for the delay!

_To Luna White: _Thank you for your patience! Your kind thoughts never exhaust themselves for me either 😉

_To Guest from March 30__th__: _I am so glad you loved the poetry and especially the flashbacks! It's a little difficult now to find a point of difference regarding these love scenes, but I really enjoyed showing how their shared history - both good and bad - helped inform their coming together now.

_To Guest from April 13__th__: _I really treasure your words – thank you! I am thrilled you thought this was effectively intimate; that is exactly what I wanted, to have an up-close rendering of this night that showed the stutters and the stops as well and the smoother moments x


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